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Vladimir Putin's Approval Rate Is Still (Mostly) Holding Steady

Before the Levada Center is shut down, it seems worth highlighting their outstanding work in tracking Vladimir Putin’s approval rate. Levada regularly publishes a poll on Russians approval or disapproval of Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medevedev, and puts the poll results in a convenient and easily accessible format. In April 2013, 63% of Russians indicated that they approved of the job Putin was doing as president. 63% is hardly overawing, but is a figure that’s broadly in line with recent months and is the exact same level of support that Putin enjoyed in December of 2011.

It’s true that when you view the entire history of polling since 2000 it seems overwhelmingly likely that Putin’s numbers will continue to tick downward: the negative trend since the end of 2010 is impossible to miss or to explain away. Anyone who’s not a bought and paid for Kremlin shill can look at that graph and immediately understand 1) that Putin’s popularity is substantially weaker than it used to be and 2) that there will be no going back to those halcyon oil boom days when his approval rating often ticked into Kim Jong-Il territory. I’m dating myself, but I actually remember when people used to contemptuously discount Levada’s polls, which have always been scrupulous and carefully done, because they showed Putin at 90% approval, a figure which “everyone knew” was impossible.

As the experience of the past year and a half ought to remind us, for Vladimir Putin “being weaker than before” does not equal “being in free fall.” I’ve lost count of the number of editorials and news stories that talk about “Putin’s swiftly falling poll numbers” or the “growing number of Russians who oppose him.” The Washington Post, as always, was the very font of conventional wisdom when it noted in a recent editorial that “Russian resistance to Mr. Putin’s autocracy steadily grows.” That, in a nutshell, is the bipartisan consensus: that Putin is growing weaker by the day, and that the opposition to him is, right this very moment, gaining new strength.

But the support, or lack thereof, of a politician like Putin isn’t a contentious philosophical debate like “how does one lead a righteous life?” “How many Russians support Vladimir Putin” is a surprisingly easy question to answer (well, so long as high quality pollsters such as Levada continue to operate). As a simple factual matter, the number of Russians opposing Putin and the number of Russians supporting him have been remarkably steady for the past year and a half. We might want more Russians to oppose Putin, we might hope that his poll numbers are in relentless decline, and it is arguably the case that Putin’s numbers should be heading downward at a more rapid rate, but they’re not. Reality has an annoying habit of confounding simplistic narratives, and the “Putin is steadily losing support” thesis just doesn’t fit the numbers.

Will such a situation continue indefinitely? No. At some point Putin’s level of support will go up or (far more likely) down. But if you’re attempting to set policy towards Russia, or even if you’re just moderately curious as to what’s going on in the country, you have to be aware of what is actually taking place, not what might or might not happen at some point in the future. And in reality, at the present time, Putin’s poll numbers aren’t in some sort of dramatic free fall but are actually in stasis. Interpretations of that fact can differ greatly, personally I’d say it shows that the strategy of “wait for Russia to collapse” isn’t a terribly good one while others will come to very different conclusions, but Putin’s (mostly) stable approval rating has to be the starting point for any debate. This is not because it flatters my own ideological conceits but because it is true.

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Assuming the Levada poll is accurate, then why DO Russians approve of Putin?

Are there objective reasons for such an approval rating, such as that Putin has been able to deliver benefits to most Russians most of the time since he has been President/Prime Minister? This appears to be so, at least in the economy and for security.

However, part of the reason for the continuing high approval level might include the manufacture of consent – a la Chomsky, where Russian MSM “conspires” with the Putinist faction to paint a rosy picture of Putin, while denigrating the opposition.

To the extent that Chomsky’s examples of such manufacture has been successful in Western countries, no reason to think its not been a factor in Russia as well.

The issue is to find out what is the balance between objective reasons for Putin popularity versus manufactured reasons.

“The issue is to find out what is the balance between objective reasons for Putin popularity versus manufactured reasons.”

There is no issue at all. Not only Putin managed to save Russia economically from the free fall, but he also restored the sense of national pride by not giving in to US/NATO which is even more important than economy. (that is what West cannot understand at all)

Also, the anti-Russian campaign sponsored by US in western media and cynical open finance support of anti-Russian forces inside Russia created a huge anti-American wave in Russia and automaticaly assured high Putin’s ratings.

By the way, 90% of mass media in Russia is heavily anti-Putin , so the notion that “Russian MSM “conspires” with the Putinist faction to paint a rosy picture of Putin, while denigrating the opposition.” is just simply ridiculous.

There is no need for Putin to denigrate the opposition (which is somehow associated with the liberal right in Russia)

Since “the right” received their well-deserved democratic boot in 2003 elections there were unable to recover. Most voters still vividly remember the results of their “liberal” policies to seriously consider them as an alternative and those monied few who, for self-serving and narrowly-defined economic interests, would like to see them back are too small in number to achieve that without “manufacturing of discontent” “a la Chomsky”. The fact is that the opposition is utterly unable to come up with an inspiring “opposing” vision. All they can do is criticize the government not so much for what it does but rather for what still needs to be done. They point to the problems, not to the solutions.

The true opposition however is not the obstreperous liberal one but a broad opposition-in-potentia of the conservative left. Some of them vote for pseudo- or quasi-communists, some for zhirinovsky-”liberal-democrats” and some support Putin for now, mostly for his socially-oriented policies. If Putin is engaged in “manufacturing consent”, he does it first and foremost in order to shield his relatively liberal economic vision from a powerful conservative left sentiment – check popular polls on that.

@John. Thanks for the link.You reference to Iraq and Bangladesh is a bit puzzling though.

Wouldn’t it be more logical to say: worse than #147 Philippines and better than #149 Singapore? Or is it inconvenient because we know from WSJ and NYT that Singapore – this pinnacle of financial success, the city-state international powerhouse also known as Switzerland of Asia – is universally praised for its “gleaming infrastructure, efficient bureaucracy and stable government”?

By arbitrary choosing to reference Russia to #144 Bangladesh and # 150 Iraq and not, say, #32 USA or #153 Mexico or #154 Turkey you seemed to be willing to convey something. Or was it incidental?

A sidenote: After Iraq’s recent suspension of 10 satellite TV channels including Al-Jazeera it won’t be a big fit to have a higher rank at WPF index.

More incidental than not. I’d figured that comparing Russia’s PFI to Iraq and Bangladesh might be more interesting than its closest index neighbours.

Might also have chosen comparator-countries based on something just as logical, such as alliteration, with Russia being better than Burma, bonnier than Belarus, less than Lesotho, crappier than Kosovo, junkier than Georgia, almost as fine as the Philippines…

Might also be interesting to compare PFI to corruption perception index 2012 (CPI), looking for negative/positive correlations – or just coincidences such as with Bangladesh’s identical rank PFI 144, CPI 144 (although CPI allows tied-ranks and skips some ranks):

Hard to evaluate power of manufacturing consent, but bloggers such as Vladimir Kara-Murza (link below) may be asserting something similar.

If as he states, more than 80% of Russians do get news from television, and that television is closed to opposition voices, doesn’t that help manufacture consent for Putin and his affiliated party? Interesting that Kara-Murza’s reference for his 80% figure links to Levada Centre source, Denis Volkov.

Kara-Murza: A Glimpse of Truth in the Kremlin’s Democracy Charade: http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/blog/vladimir-kara-murza/glimpse-truth-kremlins-democracy-charade